(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to an aircraft configuration with high aerodynamic performance; in particular the aircraft according to this invention is designed like a high performance trainer with secondary operational capabilities.
(2) Description of Related Art
Many aircraft have to be easily flown and must have peculiar dynamic characteristics in accordance with the mission to be carried out. Typical examples of the above include light aircraft for aerobatics, trainers, and combat aircraft.
These aircraft often have to fly at a high angle of attack (the angle between the aircraft and wind speed direction at any time). It is easy to understand that, under these flight conditions, the aircraft has to be very stable and easily controlled by the pilot, in order to maintain a safe attitude during flight. This stability is obtained using special automatic equipment able to generate forces and moments to counterbalance undesirable flight attitudes.
While the aircraft stability along the pitch axis can be controlled optimizing the static margin and time-to-double amplitude, the presence of lateral-directional instability (on “roll” and “yaw” axes) at high angles of attack can be difficult to control even using highly sophisticated Flight Control Systems. It is therefore necessary to maximize the aircraft lateral-directional stability up to high angles of attack in order to allow aircraft control/agility and to avoid flight departures and spins.
Usually, and in particular lately, attempts have been made by simply modifying the aerodynamic shape of the fuselage and other aircraft parts. Up to now those attempts have not led to successful results.
In the frame of the requirements listed above, one of the goals of the present invention is, therefore, to avoid the mentioned problems and, in particular, the problem relevant to an aircraft configuration with improved aerodynamic performance, able to optimize the aircraft behavior especially during high angle of attack flights.
Another goal of the present invention is to present an aircraft configuration with improved aerodynamic performance, able to reduce buffet effects typical of low aspect ratio wings with thin profile and variable camber.
Another goal of the present invention is to realize an aircraft configuration with high aerodynamic performance, able to avoid successfully the loss of lateral-directional stability and the negative effects generated by the engine flow next to the fuselage side wall and the horizontal tail, as far as drag, stability and longitudinal control are concerned.
An additional goal of the present invention is to realize an aircraft configuration with improved aerodynamic performance, able to recover from spin, optimizing, in general, the aircraft behavior at high angles of attack.